Anita Roddick insists she never went into business to make
millions. She simply wanted to earn a living for her family. As
founder and chief executive of The Body Shop International Inc.,
the 54-year-old entrepreneur has done both on a very grand
scale.

In two decades, Roddick and her husband, Gordon, have created a
cosmetic empire of more than 1,400 retail stores selling natural
skin- and hair-care products in 45 countries. Sales last year
reached more than $950 million.

What's more, Roddick has expanded her concept of
"family" to include the world's population. Whether
she's using The Body Shop's profits to renovate orphanages
in Romania, develop a domestic-violence helpline in England, or
help clean up the world's polluted air and water, Roddick is
adamant about The Body Shop doing its part to make the world a
better place. For this hippie-activist-turned-entrepreneur,
that's exactly what a corporation with a social conscience
should do. "We work to narrow the gap between principle and
practice," Roddick says, "while making fun, passion and
care part of our daily lives."

Living with the Natives

Roddick's story begins in the sleepy seaside town of
Littlehampton, England, where she often helped out at her
mother's cafe, the Clifton. Influenced as a teenager by rebel
idol James Dean and the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Roddick
dreamed of becoming an actress, but listened to her mother's
advice and took up teaching instead.

Roddick earned a teaching credential from Newton College, and,
in 1962, won a scholarship to Israel for three months to complete
her thesis. She enjoyed teaching, but loved hitchhiking through
Europe even more. On one trip, she ended up in Geneva, where she
landed a reseacher's job at the United Nations. She worked in
the department of women's rights at the International Labour
Organization, gathering information about women in Third World
countries. A year later, Roddick booked passage for Tahiti, to see
for herself how these native women worked and lived.

After several months there, she made her way to South Africa,
where a visit to a nightclub on an all-black patron night resulted
in Johannesburg police ordering Roddick to leave the country within
24 hours. She was ready for a change, anyway. "I had learned
so much from my experiences, from all the people I had met, that I
wanted to return home and take stock of my life," says Roddick
in her autobiography, Body and Soul (Crown Publishers Inc.,
$14, 800-726-0600).

Back in Littlehampton, at her mother's new venture--a
nightclub called El Cubana--Anita met Gordon Roddick. Although a
farmer by trade, he preferred writing poetry and short stories.
Like Anita, he was an independent thinker and world traveler.
He'd marched in demonstrations and supported social causes.
Anita had met her soulmate. They married in 1971.

After supporting a family of four on his writing and her
teaching, the Roddicks gave commerce a try. In 1971, they bought a
decaying residential hotel called St. Winifred's in
Littlehampton, and turned it into a bed-and-breakfast inn. When the
inn started to show a profit, they borrowed [sterling]10,000 from
the bank to open a restaurant called Paddington's. Three years
later, exhausted from working around the clock, the couple sold the
restaurant, kept the hotel as their home, and started considering
other income opportunities.

Gordon decided to take a break. He wanted to fulfill a boyhood
dream: to ride horseback from Buenos Aires to New York. Somewhat
stunned by the notion, Anita nevertheless admired Gordon's
spirit and sense of adventure. While Gordon prepared for his trip,
Anita set about creating a livelihood for herself and her
family.

Roddick wanted a simple little retail shop she could run from
nine to five, in order to be home at night with her children. What
would she sell? Roddick, recalling her Third World experiences,
remembered seeing Polynesian women rubbing cocoa butter into their
hair to make it shine, and the women of Sri Lanka using a pineapple
facial wash. "The women were polishing, protecting and
cleansing their skin and hair perfectly well, all with natural
ingredients," says Roddick, who decided she would introduce
similar natural products to women in England.

.

Asking the Right Questions

Deciding how she would bottle and present her skin- and
hair-care products was all a matter of finding a solution to what
annoyed her most about the cosmetics industry. "Irritation is
a great source of energy and creativity," says Roddick.
"It leads to dissatisfaction, and prompts people like me to
ask questions," such as, Why should someone have to buy a
large bottle of lotion when a small one would do just fine? Why
bother with all that fancy and expensive packaging? She figured
other women felt the same way.

The stage was set for a totally new entrepreneurial experience.
"It really gave me a wonderful canvas onto which I could write
everything I was--an activist, a socialist," Roddick explains.
"I was bringing all I was to this business."

But social issues don't always translate smoothly to the
business world. She had to learn to play the game, at least to get
started. To raise the [sterling]4,000 she'd need to open her
shop, Roddick paid a visit to her local bank, dressed in jeans and
a Bob Dylan T-shirt, with her two daughters in tow. The bank
manager quietly listened to her presentation and declined the loan.
Anita went home to Gordon absolutely crushed. A week later, she was
back at the bank, this time accompanied by her husband; both were
wearing business suits. The bank manager quickly reviewed
Gordon's prepared presentation. Yes, the bank would lend the
[sterling]4,000--with the Roddicks' hotel as collateral.

Playing the Game

Anita was relieved, but angry. Speaking only to Gordon during
the second interview, the bank manager had cast her "in the
role of the little woman who just happened to be along," she
explains. She learned a critical lesson, though: "There are
times when you need to be as anonymous as the people who work in
banks, and to play the game entirely by their rules. If they want
loan applicants to come in with shaven heads, you shave your head.
And sadly, you will never get a loan if you don't have
collateral."

After locating a chemist to mix her products, Roddick was ready
for business. On March 27, 1976, she opened her 300-square-foot
Body Shop in Brighton, an area with a strong student culture that
supported alternative businesses. Passersby were curious about her
Seaweed and Birch Shampoo, Avocado Moisture Cream, and other
products. By noon, Roddick was so busy that she called Gordon to
come and help. By closing time, the Roddicks had taken in
[sterling]130--half of what the couple figured the shop needed to
earn each week to cover family expenses. They were thrilled.

The Brighton store was an exemplary cottage industry. Friends
helped write labels and fill bottles in the St. Winifred's
kitchen. Roddick created little stories for customers about the
origins of her products, which she wrote on notecards. She
illustrates with this little ditty: "Don't worry about the
henna shampoo. It might smell like horse manure, but it's
wonderful on the hair. Women have used it for centuries." For
the honey-beeswax-and-almond-oil cleanser that revealed little
black specs when mixed with rosewater, she wrote: "Don't
worry about the black bits, just scoop them out. They're the
dirty footprints of the bees."

Two months later, with Gordon off to South America, Roddick
quickly lost track of her nine-to-five workday. She did the
bottling, ran the shop, handled the bookkeeping and relied on her
mother to watch the children. While her shop's earnings were
meager, Roddick was anxious to open a second store.
"Obviously, the sensible, pragmatic thing would have been to
wait for a few years and see how it worked out. I knew all
that," she says. "But I wasn't the sensible,
pragmatic type. I just thought, Wouldn't it be great,
wouldn't it be cheeky, if I could replicate the Brighton shop
somewhere else?" When the bank denied her request for a second
loan, Roddick borrowed [sterling]4,000 from a friend who took a
half ownership of the company. Her second shop opened in Chichester
in 1977.

A year later, after covering 2,000 miles and losing a horse in
Bolivia, Gordon cut his trip short and returned home to find an
operation humming with activity. Anita immediately involved him in
the bottling and labeling of her products. He moved the operation
from their kitchen to the garage, and took over the payroll and
bookkeeping. He also looked for ways to expand, even though the
banks wouldn't lend any more money.

When friends asked about opening their own shops and using The
Body Shop name, Gordon liked what he heard. The Roddicks could
supply them with all the products they needed. "We were a mom
and pop organization from a little seaside town, a place where no
one ever came. We were so thankful anyone would sell our
products," says Anita.

The first franchises were opened in England in 1977. During the
next three years, others were opened in Europe, Canada and
Australia as well. (The first U.S. shop opened in New York City in
1988.) The couple eventually formalized their franchise program by
charging a licensing fee, then about [sterling]3,000.

Sales grew steadily and the business continued to operate on a
shoestring budget, especially when it came to promotion. Why pay to
advertise, Roddick figured, if she could get free publicity through
editorial coverage in newspapers and magazines?

Opportunities abounded. When Roddick heard that many runners in
the London Marathon complained about sore feet, she had her chemist
mix up a lotion that would soothe tired feet and soften hard skin.
At the following year's event, Body Shop employees handed out
free samples to runners along the route. The media gave the story
plenty of coverage, and the Peppermint Foot Lotion became one of
The Body Shop's best-selling products.

Not every product was so well received, however. Their shampoo
for greasy hair, simply called a "de-greasant," is one
example. "It sounded like something you used to clean out an
engine, and was a complete failure," Roddick admits.

Mixing Profits with Principles

By 1984, with 38 shops throughout the United Kingdom and another
52 abroad, including franchise stores, The Body Shop still faced a
huge problem: convincing commercial landlords and leasing agents to
give first-rate retail sites to this hip, yet somewhat funky,
operation. A solution appeared when a friend approached the
Roddicks with the idea of taking their company public. Initially
hesitant, the Roddicks considered the potential benefits.
"Retail trading is all about location," Anita explains.
"We thought that if we were a public company we would be more
respected, and better placed to get the best locations."

That year The Body Shop went public on the British securities
market. During the next year, 50 new Body Shop stores opened, and
profits more than doubled to [sterling]2.4 million.

The Roddicks formed a powerful team in managing their new
corporation. While Gordon, as chairman, handled finances and
negotiated franchises, Anita developed new sales and marketing
programs and directed research and development activities. Times
were changing for The Body Shop. "It ceased to exist, at least
in my eyes, as just another trading business," says Anita.
"It became a force for social change."

Roddick began channeling company profits into a wide range of
causes, like saving the rain forest and feeding starving earthquake
victims. The Body Shop launched The Big Issue, a newspaper
for the homeless in London, which operates independently today.
Roddick established the company's Trade Not Aid initiative, a
program to provide jobs by directly sourcing ingredients from
tribal councils and villages in Third World countries. The Body
Shop's Brazil Nut Conditioner, for example, uses Brazil nut oil
from the Amazon's Kayupo Indians; jute for its pots and
terracotta foot scrub come from the Jute Works, a project to
provide jobs for Bangladesh village women.

Her activist beliefs and well-publicized campaigns have the
cosmetic industry buzzing. "We are consistently the topic of
conversation," notes Roddick. "They're probably
saying, `Why are they wasting time on human rights when they ought
to be selling moisture creams?' " Still, she wouldn't
have it any differently. "The biggest confusion with our
company is that it reads like a nonprofit organization. Normal
companies don't spend this amount of time and energy fighting
for human rights or working to protect indigenous groups,"
says Roddick. "They don't turn their shops and offices
into centers for action and social change. We do. That's why
people want to work for us."

With the massive cosmetic empire she and Gordon have built,
Roddick still finds her work incomplete. It's not about opening
more stores, selling more franchises, or making more money.
"We can do that with our eyes closed," she says. It's
about being a good business citizen, and mixing profits with social
responsibility. "I'd rather be measured by how I treat
people than how great my profits are."